After watching Vernon Philander decimate the New Zealand top order in the Cape Town test, I wondered where Philander stood in the career strike rate rankings among bowlers. A strike rate represents the number of balls a bowler has to bowl on average to capture a wicket. It represents the true wicket taking efficiency of a bowler. Philander has been a revelation since his debut and already has 67 Test wickets in 12 matches. Sure enough Philander is second only to the legendary Englishman GA Lohmann on this list.
As I browsed through this list of 126 bowlers, I started looking for Indians and was astonished not to find an Indian in the top 50. All the usual suspects from the great Test teams are on this list - the Windies of the 80s, the Aussies from the 90s and 2000s, the great Pakistani pace bowlers of the 80s & 90s. Marshall, Holding, Roberts, Garner, Walsh, Thomson, Lillee, McGrath, Gillespie, Clark, Willis, Botham, Waqar, Akram, Imran are all in there.
The full list is here...Best career bowling strike rates
The first Indian to appear on this list is at number 87, and that name is the much maligned Chetan Sharma! Chetan Sharma has the best strike rate ever for an Indian bowler in Test match history! The only other Indians in this list are Irfan Pathan, and Zaheer Khan. Amazingly spinners like Warne, McGill, Murali, and Swann are in this list, but no India spinner is in the top 126!
No wonder India has never been a dominant force in Test cricket. A great batting line up without strike bowlers will give you a lot of draws, but not regular wins. Spinners usually bowl a lot of overs for their wickets, and are seldom match winners outside the sub-continent. However what you need to win consistently world wide are aggressive wicket taking pace bowlers. And we have hardly ever had them except for Zaheer Khan recently. That is why India rose to the number one ranking in Tests briefly. India's decline has coincided neatly with Zaheer's decline in wicket taking ability.
So what do we need to do to become a force in Test cricket? Cultivate a culture of fast bowling, nurture these bowlers, and make them feel like heroes. To win consistently we don't need as many Dravids, Tendulkars, Laxmans, and Gavaskars. We need more Zaheers. We need to create conditions favourable for fast bowlers all over the country, particularly in the North where we have more of the athletic and aggressive bowlers. And then take care of them.
Otherwise we will keep wondering where the next Dravid or Tendulkar is going to come from instead of worrying about the next Zaheer Khan or Chetan Sharma. We will continue to throw our occasional wicket taking fast bowler into ODI and T20 cricket and burn them out. And always remain an average Test side that is unable to live up to its potential.
